Taking the necessary steps and knowing how to improve your hiring process has always been important in beating the competition. But in the past few years, the job market has become more and more competitive. Especially in industries like IT, which are experiencing shortage of skilled and certified IT professionals and a broadening skills gap.
Thankfully, that’s where we come in. As part of the service we offer to our clients here at Dynamic, we coach businesses on how they can improve their hiring processes and hire consistently in a difficult market.
5 Reasons To Improve Your Hiring Process
But first of all, it’s important to understand why it’s so important to have a streamlined hiring process. Which might seem obvious at first glance, so you can hire quicker. But there’s so many more reasons than this. Which we’re going to spell out for you now.
1. It’s a candidate driven market.
It’s a candidate driven market, and they have more choice than ever where to go. At any one time a good quality candidate can have multiple recruiters or hiring managers calling them, and multiple ongoing interviews. And while it’s not always fire come first served, it certainly helps.
And if your process takes 5 interviews compared to your competitors 3? They’re going to be making your candidate an offer, while you’re still asking for project number 2 for interview number 5…
2. It helps you understand what you’re looking for.
When you limit the time you spend on the hiring process, you have to be more effective with the time you do have. This means having a better understanding of exactly what you’re looking for from your new employee.
The benefits of this being that not only will you spend less time interviewing, you’ll be more clear and concise with what you actually want. This in turn, will prevent those dreaded bad hires that can cost your business thousands.
So ask yourself, do you really need to spend 7 hours interviewing each candidate? Or can you be getting them through the door quicker?..
3. It frees up your time.
The most obvious advantage of having a streamlined hiring process is freeing up more of your own time. This means you can: Interview more candidates and give yourself more potential employees to choose from, spend more time reviewing CVs or searching for ideal candidates, or growing the business in other areas than hiring.
4. Your industry reputation.
Being clear with your interview process and reducing the time candidates spend in the process can help people view your company favourable in the future. And perhaps apply again in the future when they may be a better fit for your business.
More than 60% of job seekers said that if they didn’t get the job but they received feedback during the interview process, they would be more likely to apply to the company again in the future.
And every time someone tells the story of the time they were ghosted by your hiring manager, or waited weeks for feedback; that’s another potential candidate for your business who will no longer be interested in working with you.
5. They’re interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing them.
And remember, that an interview process is a two way street. Skilled IT professionals are in massive demand. And the candidate is interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them.
If you have a drawn out interview process, involving multiple interviews spread out over months, you’re already going to be behind everyone else in the hiring timelines. Not only that, a quality candidate with multiple options will be wondering, is that what everything is like in the business?
5 Steps To Improve Your Hiring Process
Here at Dynamic we don’t just find candidates for IT businesses. We provide our clients with expert insight into the IT job market, and advise on how they can improve their own recruitment processes. Here’s the 5 most common pieces of advice we give to our clients on how to improve your hiring process:
1. Define exactly what you need for someone to be right for the role, and define what “good” looks like.
Before you even begin interviewing, (and maybe before you even begin searching for your new employee), sit down as a team and find out what the person who fills the role needs to be able to do.
Because your understanding of a position may be different to those of the team who actually work with them day-in day-out. Establishing the basics like this can be helpful to gain a complete understanding of the role. As well as make it easier to define what “good” looks like for this position. What makes someone a standout candidate or employee?
If you can define this at the start of the process, you’ll know exactly what you’re looking for, and be able to communicate this clearly to hiring managers, recruiters and to the candidates themselves.
2. Decide on the measurables you can use to judge candidates.
Once you understand what you are looking for, it’s important to be able to effectively measure if someone is successful to your standards.
The most common defined measurables are the ones we all know, years of experience, certifications, software they can use etc. But these can also be opinion based: Does this person embody the company culture of going above and beyond for a client when necessary? Will they be a good fit for the office culture and environment?
Measurables like these that aren’t as easily defined as yes or no answer to questions like “Do you have experience with this technology?”. But they are just as important for you to think about and to “score” your candidates on, so you can make an objective and factual decision between the candidates you interview.
3. Block out a set time each week, to interview candidates all together.
If you’re actively hiring and have multiple candidates to interview, block out some time in your calendar each week to interview candidates all together. This will make it easier to compare the candidates while they’re fresh in your mind.
If it’s a difficult or a more niche position you’re trying to fill, it may be the case that you might not have comparable candidates. But you can still compare candidates to the people in your team, and people who have been in the role before.
4. Decide how urgent the role is: When do you need someone to start by?
One of the biggest influences on your hiring process is how urgent your need is. What outside influences are putting pressure on you? New client accounts or employees leaving? Or is this more of a general expansion of your business?
Because when you don’t have the luxury of waiting until you find the perfect person for the job, you may have to be more flexible than you like with your own demands. But decisions like these should be made well before the first interviews happen. The last thing you want is to get two months into interviewing before deciding “actually, that first person we interviewed would’ve been acceptable”.
And on the opposite end, even when your need isn’t urgent, you should still strive to establish a deadline. Having a completely open-ended start date can lead to a drawn out process that wastes time.
5. Work with a recruitment agency, who can find quality candidates for you.
These are just a few tips on how to improve your hiring process,. But the best advice we can give would be tailored to your individual needs. In our (unbiased) opinions, the best thing you can do for your recruitment process is to work with a recruitment expert in your niche.
Recruitment agencies take care of a large part of the legwork of hiring for you: Actively headhunting quality candidates who are interested in your open position, filtering unsuitable candidates, reviewing CVs, and even performing first-stage interviews.
When you have a streamlined hiring process, you can dedicate more time to interviewing potential employees.
However lone your hiring process, we advise being transparent and open about the process with the candidates you are interviewing. It’s a great way of setting yourself apart from other businesses which shroud their interview process in mystery.